Amazon Prime Video has launched Prime Video Pathway, a training and development scheme to open up access to the creative industry.

The streaming service has pledged to invest £10m over three years on a suite of initiatives designed in collaboration with the National Film and Television School which offer training and employment opportunities to over 250 students across the three-year period.

Opening soon to prospective candidates, the academy programme will offer roles across physical production including production, art department, locations, camera, sound and accounting. It will also offer the opportunity to apply for craft and technical roles on Prime Video productions after graduation.

The streamer will fund and co-programme two courses designed to support the entry of new and diverse voices as well as supporting two training courses.

The first programme is the Prime Video Directors Workshop, a 12-month course designed to increase the number of people from underrepresented groups working in screen directing, with each student creating a short film by the end of the course. Six students will be able to take place on the workshop which starts in April 2022.

The school had previously run a Diverse Writers Workshop in 2017 and 2018 and received approximately 400 applications each year for the six available spaces. Alumni of the programme include John Ogunmuyiwa who has since been nominated for his short film Mandem at the British Independent Film Awards in 2020.

Prime Video will also become co-sponsor of the NFTS” Post Production Supervision Certificate training course, which is designed to foster effective post production management. With Amazon as a partner, the NFTS will double the course intake from 15 students to 30.

The course was 75% underwritten by Prime Video and co-sponsors Netflix and WarnerMedia.

The course has a graduate employment rate of 100%, with participants fast-tracked into roles on shows including Prime Video series Anasi Boys and My Policeman.

“The UK is home to an extraordinary wealth of creative talent, and as our home-grown productions grow, we need to support a sustainable and diverse talent pool with world-class training, and a new creative generation for the industry,” said Dan Grabiner, head of UK Originals, Amazon Studios.

Director of the National Film and Television School Jon Wardle added that the collaboration will “increase representation behind the camera and scale up the skills required by the many original productions coming down the track.”

Alongside the NFTS academy programmes, Prime Video Pathway”s £10m fund will also support the SVoDs commitment to build a stepping up scheme into all future UK Amazon Original productions, as well as over 30 apprenticeship roles including content producers and broadcast assistants.

This article first appeared on Broadcast.

Image – Mandem: John Ogunmuyiwa is Diverse Writers Workshop graduate.